i know, go to the doctor... it's just i'm not so confident about my gp for baby-related stuff, not to mention the fee (i live in france, no nhs), and the lovely free pediactric clinic is only on thursdays, so i just missed my opening this week.

the deal is, dd has been teething for AGES, poor thing, she already had 8 teeth by 10 months and has had swollen gums from premolars starting to work their way up for a couple of weeks now. she does get prone to nappy rash when she's teething and had a pretty nasty bout a couple of weeks back, redness, raised puffy bits... most of it died down in less than a day but she's had this one sore for a really long time and i can't make it go away. it doesn't actually seem to hurt her at all, she doesn't even flinch when i put stuff on it (have tried my usual cream, the french miracle cure "pommade st. louis", and even a little bacitracin)... but it's just not going. it's maybe 3-4 mm across, and now looks like a whitish raised ring with a reddish depression in the center. it's not weeping or anything, just stubbornly refusing to disappear.

anybody had a problem like this before? she has one or two other small spots as well that seem to be persisting, but they're more recent and don't look as bad.

DH produced some canesten so I decided to give it a try (he assured me it wouldn't do any harm) and between that and lots of open-air time, which fortunately so far has not involved weeing on the living room carpet , it's definitely looking better.

Glad you are having sucess Another top tip is if you are changing a wet nappy and you can still see the cream on, just literally change the nappy, don't bother to wipe the cream off and therefore agrevate the skin more, just to put the same cream back on.

I ended up taking DD to the doctor because it wasn't really clearing up - she prescribed a week of septivon (hemlock-smelling liquid soap) and fucidine ointment, which I gave up on after 6 days because the spots had gotten way worse and it was wreaking havoc on her tender skin... it was going all red and dry and irritated. Switched to bacitracin for 4 days (until I could get to my GP), which did seem to improve it slightly - at least the redness and irritation went away. By this time it was so horrible though, like 10 times worse than when I'd taken her to the doc the first time, though fortunately still not causing her any pain (whew!).

GP took one look and when I told him what treatment she'd had, prescribed an oral antibiotic. It's drying up incredibly quickly now, huge improvement in the first day. Hooray! Don't generally do antibiotics for myself or the little ones, but sometimes you have to give in I guess.